Monoclonal antibodies have been widely used in nearly all areas of life science for over three decades and represent a growing class of agents also in the clinics, mainly due to their generally high specificity and excellent pharmacokinetic properties. Today, regulatory authorities have approved over 20 monoclonal antibodies for therapeutic or diagnostic use.

It was classically assumed that once the development of the central nervous system ended, “everything can die, nothing can regenerate and be renewed”. This dogma, restricting neurogenesis to a developmental phenomenon has, however, been challenged by the discovery that new neurons are created in specific regions of the adult mammalian brain.

Synapses undergo age-associated morphological and functional changes in a number of model organisms and in humans. In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, synaptic changes were seen during normal aging in both central and peripheral parts of the nervous system and linked to cognition, memory, learning, locomotor, and homeostatic deficits.